Tapa designs take a lot of beating

Sihotie, Nioge: New from Old: Omie Tapa Art PNG, Lismore Regional Gallery until 28 March 2021.

The ‘cloth’ to produce tapa comes from the beaten bark of the paper mulberry tree, found and worked in many parts of the Pacific, including Hawaii and Tonga, and believed to have been brought from parts of China and Taiwan millennia ago.

The small catalogue for this stunning exhibition of painted tapa from the Omie people of PNG’s Oro province comes with a swatch of the real thing, the earthy colours instantly pleasing to the eye. It explains that, “Many elements in tapa design are at once physical representations of their environment and part of esoteric knowledge known only to the Omie,” adding, “The production of nioge tapa cloth is now one of the most important material elements of Omie cultural practices and plays a critical role in defining and maintaining Omie unique cultural identity.”

The Omie are a remote people numbering around 2200 souls whose seven main villages perch on the slopes of the eastern coastal ranges. While stunning, this is an economically deprived part of a generally poor if extraordinarily artistic country. Papua New Guinea has a number

of tapa making communities. To the foreign eye, their work is abstractedly geometric and highly appealing, with the colours, like the beaten ‘cloth’, being drawn from nature, and the symbolism, like much Aboriginal art, revealed only by explanation. The skills of the Omie are a standout but only in comparatively recent times have they been recognised by the wider world. Working with locals, the driving force behind this expansion was an Australian Joan Winter who has supported the mostly-female artists to understand and access the Indigenous art market and helped mount overseas exhibitions such as this one. The works are on sale but do not come cheap, nor should they - there is no doubt that the income provided will be appreciated back home.